As Jamaica recovered from the effects of a near-miss by Hurricane Allen, 'Green Leaf' returned to her 'cri de coeur' about Fern Gully which she had first uttered two decades before.

In early August 1980, Hurricane Allen appeared to be approaching Jamaica head-on, but veered north bringing most destruction to the NE parishes of Portland and St Mary, but the other northern parishes, including St Ann, suffered especially from the storm surge.

..........................................

Daily Gleaner, August 24,
1980

Can
this irreplaceable treasure be saved?

Fern
Gully threatened by erosion

BY
GREEN LEAF

Jamaica's
unique, natural garden, Fern Gully, with

a
population of scores of fern species, a
few

bromeliads, aeroids and a canopy of
indigenous

trees, including the impressive
"Anchovy pear,”

is threatened by erosion
and toxicality. Human

vandalism is minimal.

Fern
Gully is well advanced to being a
disaster

area. Can this precious and famous
treasure be

saved? Is the Gardens Advisory
Committee aware

of impending loss, and if
so, what is this

Committee's proposal to
halt loss?

Deterioration proceeds at such a rate that within a
few years people will question why Fern
Gully was

so named. All that will
remain is a limestone ravine

bisected by
a narrow, serpentine road that links

verdant
Walker's Wood and Ocho Rios.

Ocho
Rios and by extension the entire northcoast
is rapidly expanding as a vacation district
whichstands to forever lose the
irreplaceable treasureof Fern Gully.

Not
the greatest expenditure of money nor skills
of dedicated gardeners could duplicate Fern
Gully. What
is the reaction to this threat? Do
horticultural societies and their related natural history companions or the Tourist Board care?

How
fatally doomed is Fern Gully as

demonstrated by comparing the present

appearance of this
gorge with a postal pictoral

card made,
I suspect, 50 or 60 years
ago by the

photographers, Cleary and Elliot,
in their series of

Jamaican beauty spots.
About that time too, the

Jamaican Post
Office issued a similar set of scenic

postal
stamps. Both postcard and stamp show Fern
Gully inhabited by a species so luxuriant that a

man and buggy included in the
scene are barely

discernable.

....................................................

Disaster
in Fern Gully is caused by inter-related
factors. They are motor traffic and
erosion.

Motor traffic intensifies wherever wealth, in this
case the wealth activated by the bauxite
industry,

results in distributed prosperity.
Fumes exhaled by

engines harm plant
life by fouling the atmosphere,

by overlaying plant parts (leaves, stems, exposed

roots) and soil with an adhesive film.

On
the film are deposited panicles of dust.
An

impenetrable coating is sealed on preventing
the plants from breathing. They suffocate
and

eventually die. Only the most
competitive survive.

Indeed, many scientists now
marvel that any plants

at all still
live in Fern Gully.

A
secondary attack on Fern Gully vegetation isvibration from vehicular traffic. This
weakens

soil layers, thereby discouraging and
disturbing

root anchorage. Thus the roots
become unable to

supply nutrients to plants.

Thirdly,
Fern Gully has the enemy of erosion.
The process in Fern
Gully is maximised by that very
factor of steep, damp limestone cliffs which
originally induced the natural establishment of
fern colonies.

The
Flora flood alerted the late Vernon
James,

then Superintendent of Parks and
Gardens, to losses in Fern Gully. He
utilised fallen trees as barriers and
re-planted fern. The task lackedsupervision. Workers concentrated on Rooseveltfern because
it is abundant in that area. I urged
Mr. James to save the nephrolepis and
adiantum.

Even if they are replanted who
would care for

them, he objected. I
now realise that their spores

would not
survive the toxic fumes.

In
the 16 years since, Fern Gully's denudement
continued. Among the notable casualties are
fern

allies and mosses which are among
the treasures of

Fern Gully.

The
total ecology is shattered. Could
Fern Gully

be rehabilitated by say closing
the road to motor

vehicular traffic and
diverting this to the by pass?

Yet
that alone is insufficient Other agencies
are

essential. Very little time remains to
save Fern

Gully from complete wreck. Is
the Ministry of

Agriculture whose responsibility
is Fern Gully,

prepared to act on whatever recommendations

might be advanced by
the Gardens
Advisory

Committee?

For
there are several practical alternatives to
that of passively awaiting death in Fern
Gully.

and there were others who shared her concerns

Daily Gleaner,
September 7, 1980

From
the mail-bag:

FERN
GULLY: Thank you most sincerely for your
splendid article calling attention to
the dangers

that beset Fern Gully. Many
persons have

commented upon it yet none
of us know what could

be done by
citizens to protect this place from being
as you stressed, forever lost.

M.S.
St. Ann's Bay.

I
am impressed by what you wrote about
the

destruction of Fern Gully. I, too,
have noticed that

it is sadly deteriorating
year after year. Surely the

citizens of
St. Ann and
especially those around

Ocho Rios who
benefit from this tourist attraction

should do
something to halt destruction!

Of
course, all Jamaicans stand to lose if
Fern Gully

is destroyed, but it is Ocho Rios that would lose the

most.

CONCERNED.
Montego Bay.

Daily Gleaner,
September 14, 1980

From
the mail-bag:

FERN
GULLY: Let me add my own big Thanks
to

you for your moving article on the
impending loss of

Fern Gully. Several people
who read the article are

saying that it
could not have been more timely.

Also,
do you know that hurricane Allen
additionally destroyed this beauty spot by rooting

out many trees with the result that the
ferns are

fully exposed to harsh daylight?

E.
Brown, Port Maria, St. Mary.

a reminder from the Duperly photographers,probably the island's most famous, of Fern Gully in the 1920s

....................................................

The destruction of the natural environment of Fern Gully involved not only ferns and other plants, but also the fauna, especially, it seems, the 'Partridges of Fern Gully'.

....................................................

In the mid-1980s there was an attempt to restore Fern Gully and deal with some of the problems there.

Daily
Gleaner, January 18,1981

FERN
GULLY TO BE A NATIONAL PARK

Fern
Gully, in Ocho Rios, North-East St. Ann,
is to be made a national park by the Government,

at a cost of $1.9
million.

Included
in the project is a by-pass road from
Breadnut Hill. This will provide for the
blocking

off of vehicular traffic through
Fern Gully at a certain point. But the
detour would be arranged

in such a
close proximity to the scenic spot that
visitors using vehicles
would encounter no

The
cyclists will travel through the steep Mount
Diablo, and the winding rush of Fern
Gully. Young riders such as

Ricardo Housen,
Mark Collins, Kirk Catnott, could find the
journey taxing, and will probably have
difficulty

maintaining pace with the top 'A'
Class riders.

'We affi meck a stop ina Fern Gully'

from 'Jamaica Land We Love', Singer Jay's entryfor the Festival Song Contest, 1988

Easton Clarke a.k.a. Singer Jay

In mid-September 1988 Jamaica was hit head-on by its first major hurricane since Charlie in 1951. The online Gleaner archive is almost non-existent for the days after the hurricane hit, so the only comment about Gilbert's impact on Fern Gully that I have found, so far, comes from - mandevilleweekly.com:

'It still remains attractive with banks

of ferns and other plants forming a

canopy. Prior to the damage caused

by Hurricane Gilbert,
motor vehicles traversing Fern Gully would
need to use headlights at all

times but
that is no longer the case.'

Presumably Gilbert had undone some of whatever good had been done by the restoration efforts in 1983-4, leaving Fern Gully to be described in the following decade in much the same despairing terms as in earlier decades.

Sadly 1990 saw the departure of Aimee Webster deLisser, who died on October 6th. She left behind a fine journalistic legacy dating from the 1930s when she was a pioneering young woman reporter. Her profound concern for the preservation of Jamaica's natural heritage is clear in her writings quoted on this site.

But the story of Fern Gully continued along the same old tracks. A writer in the Gleaner in April 1990 wrote: 'Fern Gully is deteriorating because of the effect of fumes from heavy traffic' Daily Gleaner, April 4, 1990

In October 1990 Marjorie Stair complained about the road blocks:

. . . the particular road block was at the entrance to Fern Gully. The people had blocked the road because they claimed they had not received any water for several days. They chose the day that the tourist buses visit the area to block the road.The irony of the situation was that I drove behind the truck which was taking water into the area, almost the full length Of Fern Gully. The minute the truck driver realised that the road was still blocked, was the minute he backed his (the National Water Commission truck) into an intersection, turned the truck around and went back whence he came with the water. Daily Gleaner, October 29, 1990

In the following year the Ocho Rios Chamber of Commerce tried once again to urge the preservation of surrounding environment:

Fern Gully: the value of which as a beauty spot Is being eroded by squatting and littering. Meanwhile, the destruction of plant species from exhaust fumes continues. The Chamber endorses a recommendation that an alternate route via Breadnut Hill be developed to ease the pressure on Fern Gully and that the attraction be cleared of all shacks and advertisements.

Daily Gleaner, December 7, 1991

Towards the end of 1992 three well-known Jamaicans added their voices to the cries of despair about Fern Gully - Norma Soas wrote an anguished article in the Daily Gleaner, which drew equally heart-felt responses from Desmond Henry and Morris Cargill.more >>>

The Gleaner Editorial for May 7, 1996

Closing
Fern Gully

All
lovers of Jamaica's natural beauty will
applaud the move made recently in the
Senate to

have the Fern Gully restored
to something of its pristine attractiveness,
by limiting its use as a

main road.
The traffic
which passes daily through this scenic gorge
has taken a heavy toll of it,

rendering
it more of an eyesore than a beauty
spot.

There
was a time when this picturesque natural
garden of luxuriant ferns and other forest
plants and trees was a delight to the
eye and a balm to the senses. The canopy created by the

spreading overhead
branches formed a natural screen through
which the sunlight filtered in a pleasing pattern of
light and shade. Descriptions of Jamaica's
beauty never failed to include

Fern Gully
as one of the country's prime natural
attractions.

Today,
very little of this pristine beauty remains.
Men and machines have combined to bring
virtual ruin to Fern Gully. Much of the
natural vegetation has disappeared, destroyed as
much

by vandals as by the noxious fumes
from the trucks, tankers and buses which pass through it

daily with destructive
regularity.

While
it might not be practicable to close
the gorge completely to vehicular traffic -
at least

until a viable alternative route
can be provided - it might be possible
to limit its use only to

motor cars,
diverting the trucks and buses and other
heavy-duty vehicles to another route.

With
the emphasis being placed on the importance
of Tourism to the Jamaican economy, it
would seem to make sense to preserve
Fern Gully as a scenic drive and as
one of the country's

beauty spots. Whatever
inconvenience might be caused by its closure
to heavy traffic, this can

surely be
outweighed by
the advantage to be gained by having such a natural asset being used

as a real tourist attraction.

In August 1997 a contributor to the Gleaner wrote of travelling to Montego Bay during the Emancipation-Independence holidays, and summoned up the spirit of Aimee Webster deLisser to plead once more for her beloved, but still battered, Fern Gully.

Daily
Gleaner, August 9, 1997

In
passing through Fern Gully it was patently
clear that this piece of our natural
heritage was

systematically
being eroded and that we as the
generation which will inherit it, will be
without

the benefits
of this national repository of ferns -
some of which can only be found in
Jamaica.

We need to understand that the
preservation of Fern Gully will necessitate
the co-operation of

all the stakeholders
active participation but, moreso, they must
all understand that there must

come a
time when personal interest/profit must not
be so insistent on having its own way
- that

time is now.

I
have watched with horror the decimation of
this community of greenery and my ears
now ring

with the persistent pleas of
the late Aimee Webster Delisser as she
begged for the rescue of this

important
part of our natural history. Something has
to be done to rescue and resuscitate
this

valley which
has been home to thousands of ferns and
which at the same time provided a true
Jamaican/tropical welcome to the North Coast.

Restoration:In the later years of the decade efforts were again made to solve the problems of Fern Gully, with varying degrees of success.

EDITORIAL Tourism prospectThere
is also good news about Port Antonio, another of our tourist
towns. . . .
Not
so good, however, is the report that the hoped-for improvement of
Fern Gully has not been realised. As one of the best-known visitor
attractions of the island, Fern Gully deserves to be given maximum
attention to restore and preserve its pristine beauty. How
disappointing to be told that it is still in a deplorable condition.
Daily Gleaner,
November 28, 1999